Playing with Technology

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Inadvertant learning

June 23, 2009

Conferences, Gaming, Personal, Social Software

Google Inc., Marketing, social media, Warcraft, Web conferencing, World of Warcraft

I’ve been on vacation since returning from the New Media Consortium conference in Monterey. Usually this would mean playing a lot of Warcraft, mowing the yard, keeping ahead of the laundry, and all those other things one does when on a staycation. But this one has been a little different. Kathy now works from home, which means I really do need to stay on top of the housework (no waiting to start so that I would be done just before she got home), and it means I am listening to the webinars she is attending (Yes, I have noise canceling headphones for WoW, but they only do so much.).

This week’s webinar series was all about SEO and inbound marketing. The event was organized by Hubspot and featured a series of well-respected authorities on SEO and marketing. A lot of attention was payed to increasing your rank in Google, extending the reach of your content, and making the proper use of social media in marketing yourself. It was very interesting stuff to listen to as I completed my various daily quests. Many of the things they mentioned I knew, but there were several things I took away that I think will prove useful in the coming months as I work on the Voices site. Who knows I may have even passed their exam so I will be certified in inbound marketing.
So far, so good

June 11, 2009

Conferences, NMC, Personal

Google, Google Inc., Kathy Sierra, World History Museum

I upgraded to WordPress 2.8 lastnight. So far I like most of the changes and as far as I can tell most of the plugins are working as intended. The only thing that bugs me a bit is the change to plugins. I liked having all the inactive ones at the bottom. Maybe I just need to look for options. Honestly, I have never regretted my decision to go with WordPress. Matt and his team have done a wonderful job.

Also in the so far, so good category is NMC 2009. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I have been really happy with the sessions I have attended. Kathy Sierra’s talk this morning was excellent and I’ll probably have a separate post about it in the near future. The Google Earth session gave me some great ideas for Katie and Peter’s World History Museum project, the Screencasting session had a few cool tricks, and the session by the CSUMB faculty was great. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
The future of the Liberal Arts

June 2, 2009

Personal, Policy, Presentations, Teaching

Bennington College, Curriculum, Liberal arts colleges, Liz Coleman
I have written in previous posts about my fear that the Liberal Arts are losing their relevance in the eyes of society. In this TED talk ¹ Liz Coleman, president of Bennington College, highlights some of the things I have been thinking about the state of many Liberal Arts colleges. While I do not think that things are as dire as she makes them out to be, I do think that Wooster’s curriculum needs to change. We need to have more inter-disciplinary courses. It strikes me as odd that we offer over 400 courses a semester and yet less than 20 are inter-disciplinary. I’m not sure if our current curriculum was designed to address the principles she highlights (Rhetoric, Design, Mediation, Improvisation, and Quantitative Reasoning), but I would like to see us revisit the curriculum with an eye toward increasing inter-disciplinary work. I hope President Coleman’s remarks make you think about the nature of a Liberal Arts education and whether we have strayed from the path.

Video for The future of the Liberal Arts
1. Liz Coleman’s TED talk ↩
Hulu desktop app

May 29, 2009

Instructional Technology, Multimedia

Apple Inc., Hulu, Technology/Internet, Web 2.0

I spent a little time playing around with Hulu’s desktop app. It was a very slick implementation. I really liked the fact that I could associate it with my Hulu account. This allowed me to pull up things on my queue and subscriptions. One annoying thing about this integration is that I couldn’t find a way to add things to my subscriptions from the desktop app. I do appreciate the fact that it works with the Apple remote. Something to keep an eye on and more people need to watch online video. Don’t let it die!
Upcoming summer projects in i.t.

May 29, 2009

Conferences, Instructional Technology, Personal

Moodle, NMC, PHP programming language, Smith College

Many things on my plate for this summer and as usual not enough time to do them. I’ll be getting the new WPMU server’s home site finalized and probably try to develop/adapt a couple themes for use as faculty website templates. Along those lines, if anyone knows how M. Jackson Wilkinson is doing the cool stuff he is on his site please let me know. I’d like to try and adapt his site for use as a faculty website template. In addition to this I’ll be trying to get iTunes you off the ground (still waiting for the keys to get it setup). I need to be lead on the Moodle project team and make sure Moodle gets upgraded, and that we draft some formal policies course creation, backup, and deletion. There is also the woodle usage report to finish.

In addition to this I’ll be going to the Moodle users meeting at Smith College next week and to the NMC conference in Monterey a week or two later. I’m looking forward to these opportunities to network and learn. The sad part is that the two events cut out about 8 days from the already limited time I have (really starting to hate silly ten month contract) to get all of this stuff done. I’ll just have to muddle through as best as I can.